The gender card

The Bush administration was no more inclined to promote female strength at home than overseas. It sought to roll back women's progress on many fronts, from reproductive rights to employment equity to military status. And in the end, 1,001 Ashleys can't save Bush, nor the Republicans who will inherit his mantle, from the electorate's knowledge of his multiple rescue failures, culminating in the widely viewed photo of our commander in chief strumming a guitar in San Diego while the citizens of New Orleans, female and male both, cried for help.

This year, as always, the presidential candidates must contend with the rescue formula, complicated by the fact that Bush has so devalued its currency. In this climate, Hillary Clinton can do what her male counterparts cannot. She is, indeed, reaching for the gender card, as her accusers claim. It's just different from the one they imagine. She is auditioning for the role of rescuer on a feminist frontier.

She returned to Wellesley to tell female undergraduates that she was there to free them; she was there to help them "roll up our sleeves" and "shatter that highest glass ceiling." As such, she latched onto a crucial element of presidential races past, and possibly to come -- that at the core of all American political rescue fantasies is a young woman in need.

In the general election, whoever the candidates may be, they will be tempted, perhaps required, to show just those bona fides. Clinton may be the only one who can do so without betraying the signature of a disgraced cowboy ethic.